Moral Clarity 1

Running Head: MORAL CLARITY

Moral Clarity

Scott S. Wiltermuth David T. Newman

University of Southern California University of Southern California

May 22nd, 2015

Words: 4,202

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Abstract

We examine the process by which people come to possess different levels of moral

clarity, which denotes the degree of ambiguity people perceive when judging whether

behaviors are right or wrong (Wiltermuth & Flynn, 2013). We first argue that moral

clarity is higher when people rely on intuition rather than deliberation when making

moral judgments. We posit that clarity may be greatest when people are experiencing

emotions associated with certainty appraisals. Next, we examine the processes that give

rise to heightened levels of moral clarity. We note how these processes parallel the

processes that give rise to certainty in attitudes not related to morality, but then review

how the consequences of moral clarity and certainty on non-moral issues differ. We then

describe how moral clarity has both innate origins and can be heightened or repressed

depending upon the influence of parents, teachers, peers, etc. Finally, we outline

predictions about how moral clarity may differ by culture.

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Moral Clarity

Some people are baffled that others seem to see behavior in such clear terms of right and

wrong, good and bad, and black and white. They struggle to understand how those others miss so

much nuance that they do not recognize that it is not always clear whether behaviors are morally

right or morally wrong. Those who do see clear distinctions between right and wrong are equally

baffled by the inability of those who see shades of gray everywhere to diagnose right from

wrong, good from bad, and black from white.

These differences in moral clarity, which denotes the degree of ambiguity people perceive

when judging whether behaviors are right or wrong (Wiltermuth & Flynn, 2013), may be socially

determined. In this chapter, we explore how people develop a sense of moral clarity and why

individuals differ in how much ambiguity they perceive in moral judgments. We first examine

whether a sense of moral clarity is more likely to develop from intuitive or deliberative forms of

processing. We then examine which cognitive processes are likely to give rise to a heightened

sense of moral clarity. We investigate specifically if the processes are general insofar as they also

give rise to certainty in non-moral judgments or if they are specific to moral judgments. We also

examine how the consequences of moral clarity differ from the consequences of certainty on

non-moral issues. Next, we address whether people have a fixed, innate sense of moral clarity, or

if moral clarity is a learned attitude that is, at times, cultivated and, at other times, suppressed

through education. Finally, we discuss whether cultural values, such as

individualism/collectivism and power distance, influence the degree to which people see

ambiguity in the judgment of moral behaviors.

Intuitive vs. Deliberative

Moral clarity may be greater with intuition than with deliberation

Intuition is a kind of cognition, contrasted with reasoning, which occurs quickly,

effortlessly, and automatically, such that the outcome but not the process is accessible to

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consciousness (Haidt, 2001). Haidt’s model of intuitive ethics proposes that moral intuitions are

activated immediately in response to morally relevant facts, with effortful, deliberative moral

reasoning occurring only after a judgment has already been made. Empirical studies have tended

to confirm the view that affective intuition plays a larger role than deliberate reasoning in the

process of moral judgment (Greene & Haidt, 2002). People often claim to know with certainty

that an action is morally wrong even when they cannot marshal reasoning to support their

intuition (Haidt, 2007). Hence we might expect that judgments driven by intuition evince greater

moral clarity than those reached through careful deliberation.

Research on the amount of time allowed to make decisions supports this expectation.

Inhibiting deliberation through manipulations of time alters moral judgments in response to

dilemmas involving the killing of one person to save many (Suter & Hertwig, 2011). Time

pressure yields fast deontological gut reactions (e.g., killing is wrong) whereas time availability

enables consequentialist deliberations (e.g., the lives of many outweigh the life of one) to

override the initial response. Furthermore, direct manipulations of deliberative decision-making

have been shown to increase deception and decrease altruism (Zhong, 2011), suggesting that

deliberation obscures our intuitive understanding of moral behavior by permitting rationalization

of unethical conduct.

These findings comport with work on the effect of the perceived time taken to generate

an evaluation on attitude certainty (Tormala, Clarkson, & Henderson, 2011). Quick evaluations

tend to promote certainty when people express opinions or evaluate familiar objects, whereas

slow evaluations generally promote certainty when people form new opinions or evaluate

unfamiliar objects. Morality is familiar to most adults, or even organized by evolutionary

mechanisms in advance of individual experience (Haidt, 2007); it is reasonable to suppose that

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moral judgment is more like expressing than forming an opinion. Thus moral judgment is most

likely to demonstrate clarity when proceeding directly from intuition.

Tetlock’s (2003) work on taboo tradeoffs indicates that we expect people to distinguish

right from wrong quickly and easily, and excessive deliberation on the relative worth of sacred

values (e.g., justice) may signal a lack of moral clarity and thereby cast doubt on an individual’s

moral character. Some exchanges (e.g., money for human dignity) are considered unthinkable,

and people respond to the contemplation of such tradeoffs with moral outrage, cleansing, and

value reaffirmation (Tetlock, Kristel, Elson, Green, & Lerner, 2000). Moral clarity displayed via

intuitive judgment may therefore serve as a yardstick by which to measure ethical uprightness in

ourselves and others.

Information processing and clarity

In contrast to the foregoing, research on information processing has at times implied that

cognitive elaboration, or the thoughtfulness with which one considers information relevant to an

evaluation, enhances attitude certainty (Smith, Fabrigar, MacDougall, & Wiesenthal, 2008).

However, recent evidence suggests that this effect is driven primarily by people’s perceptions of

their own elaboration and naïve theories that elaboration produces better judgments (Barden &

Tormala, 2014). Because of the fluency with which people can generate post-hoc reasoning to

justify their intuitive judgments (Haidt, 2001), a quick, clear, intuitive moral judgment may often

give rise to an impression of thoughtful processing.

Attitude accessibility is associated with greater attitude strength (Holland, Verplanken, &

Van Knippenberg, 2003), entailing that intuitive judgments come stamped with the imprimatur

of certainty by virtue of their ease of retrieval. Over a lifetime of experience and repetition,

moral intuition is elevated to moral conviction. Clarity in moral judgment is also enhanced by the

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certainty appraisals imbued in morally relevant emotions such as anger, disgust, happiness, and

contentment (Tiedens & Linton, 2001). These emotions occur with a sense of certainty and

promote heuristic (intuitive) processing, whereas emotions such as hope, surprise, worry, and

sadness occur with a sense of uncertainty and promote systematic (deliberative) processing. If

intuitive processes heighten perceptions of moral clarity, we would therefore expect people to

perceive themselves to have greater moral clarity when experiencing emotions associated with

certainty.

We may also expect cognitive depletion to result in greater moral clarity. Information

processing is often inhibited by ego depletion, leading people to rely heavily on automatic

processes such as intuition when they are ego-depleted (Baumeister, Muraven, & Tice, 2000).

Research on consumer responses to advertising has found that attitudes formed under conditions

of depletion exhibit greater certainty and influence on purchase behavior (Wan, Rucker,

Tormala, & Clarkson, 2010). Feeling depleted may increase certainty through the perception that

substantial information processing has taken place. Consequently, we may expect that ego

depleted individuals will form moral judgments based on intuition and with a high degree of

clarity.

Epiphanies and inspiration

Epiphanies and prophetic experiences, insofar as they impel individuals to adopt a

particular course of conduct deemed virtuous or obligatory, may represent extreme versions of

moral clarity. Those who experience divine communication frequently report it as thoughts or

feelings simply appearing in their mind, accompanied by a sense of absolute clarity and authority

(Dein & Cook, 2015). Epiphanic experiences are usually accompanied by awe, an emotion

characterized primarily by a sense of vastness and a need for accommodation (Keltner & Haidt,

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2003). It seems likely that the emotion of awe includes a certainty appraisal, which may drive the

intense clarity associated with inspiration.

One, Two, or Many Processes

Degrees of clarity across moral domains

Individuals are predisposed to different trait levels of clarity in the moral domain

(Wiltermuth & Flynn, 2013). However, the moral domain is not a monolith; moral foundations

theory proposes the existence of plural moral domains whose values are sometimes in conflict

(Graham et al., 2013). Morality is an adaptive characteristic of our species, born out of several

clusters of innate intuitions naturally selected over countless generations of human development.

In a similar vein, moral clarity may be an adaptation for successfully converting our moral

intuitions into concordant behavior. We may therefore expect that, just as endorsement of each

moral foundation (e.g., care, fairness, loyalty, authority, sanctity) varies from person to person,

so too does the clarity with which individuals form judgments in each domain. People who

strongly endorse a particular moral foundation may experience greater certainty within that

domain than would people for whom the same foundation is of lesser concern.

This view is substantiated by work showing the effect of moral foundations framing on

political attitudes. Feinberg and Willer (2013) found that most environmental discourse centers

on concerns of harm and care, with liberals but not conservatives viewing the environment in

moral terms. Reframing environmental rhetoric in terms of purity reduces the gap between

liberals and conservatives, suggesting a change in conservatives’ moral judgments even on an

issue for which they may have previously perceived little ambiguity. Framing issues using moral

foundations may shift political attitudes through either entrenchment or persuasion (Day, Fiske,

Downing, & Trail, 2014). Relevant moral foundation frames entrench political attitudes for both

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liberals and conservatives, presumably by enhancing the moral clarity with which the issues are

judged. Persuasion, on the other hand, has been found only for conservative-relevant moral

frames of liberal issues. This is not to say that other instances of persuasion are impossible—

clearly they occur all the time—but some framings may be more persuasive than others for

specific types of people. Graham, Haidt, and Nosek (2009) observed that conservatives endorse

all five foundations about equally, while liberals assign preeminence to care and fairness.

Conservatives may accordingly experience moral clarity in more varied contexts than do liberals.

Manichaeism and dogmatism

Manichaeism, originally a religion founded by the Iranian prophet Mani, now refers to

any dualistic worldview that pits good against evil or us against them. Manichaean thinking may

be an expression of high trait-level moral clarity, which leads people to experience the moral

universe in black and white. Alternatively, individuals who are taught Manichaean thinking as

dogma may resultantly develop greater clarity in judging relevant moral issues. Although

powerful convictions about right and wrong may sometimes encourage prosocial behaviors, they

also underlie acts of ideologically driven violence and terrorism (Skitka & Mullen, 2002).

Extreme views on both ends of the liberal-conservative spectrum are associated with

dogmatic beliefs about the correctness of one’s position (Toner, Leary, Asher, & Jongman-

Sereno, 2013), yielding political intolerance that cuts both left and right (Crawford & Pilanski,

2014). Political partisans are likely to support discrimination against those who violate their

moral values (Wetherell, Brandt, & Reyna, 2013), and conversation across the aisle may make

the situation worse, not better: in developing their Manichaeism scale, Johnson, Motyl, and

Graham (2015) found that individuals who discussed abortion or gun control with someone who

held an opposing stance showed increases in Manichaeism compared to those who talked with

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someone who agreed with them. Like visual acuity, moral clarity may be facilitated by the

presence of contrast.

Persuasion

There is increasing acknowledgment that the primary function of human reasoning may

be not epistemic but argumentative (Mercier & Sperber, 2011). Motivated reasoning is

particularly evident in the selective application of general moral principles to rationalize

preferred moral conclusions (Uhlmann, Pizarro, Tannenbaum, & Ditto, 2009). Rather than act as

intuitive scientists seeking the truth, people behave like intuitive politicians, theologians, and

prosecutors who advocate, protect, and enforce the values to which they are already committed

(Tetlock, 2002). This implies that moral clarity may be greatest when individuals are in a

persuasive or combative mode.

This view is supported by evidence that attitude certainty increases when individuals

resist attempts at persuasion (Tormala & Petty, 2002). Conversely, increasing attitude certainty

tends to amplify the dominant effects of attitude on judgment, such that univalent attitudes

become more resistant to persuasion and ambivalent attitudes less resistant (Clarkson, Tormala,

& Dugan, 2008). Thus certainty enables people to see clearly whether their judgments support

one or multiple perspectives in a persuasive context. Because explanatory reasoning has a way of

reinforcing existing positions, morally oriented conversation promotes honest behavior by

clarifying ethical values (Gunia, Wang, Huang, Wang, & Murnighan, 2012).

Time and distance

If folk wisdom is to be believed, people perceive events more clearly with the benefit of

time and distance. This view of clarity is supported by evidence from construal level theory

demonstrating that people judge immoral actions more harshly, and moral actions more

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approvingly, when the actions are psychologically distant (Eyal, Liberman, & Trope, 2008).

Distal objects and behaviors are construed more abstractly, such that individuals’ evaluations are

less susceptible to contextual influence and more reflective of ideological commitments

(Ledgerwood, Trope, & Chaiken, 2010). Hence we form moral judgments most clearly when

considering events far in the past or future, or when judging people across the divide of

continents or social class. Moreover, we apply the moral clarity of distance to our own self-

concept, strongly rejecting the representativeness of distant-future behaviors that violate our

acknowledged values (Wakslak, Nussbaum, Liberman, & Trope, 2008).

General or Specific Processes

The preceding discussion illustrates that numerous processes influence the sense of

clarity people have when making moral judgments. Numerous factors also increase the sense of

certainty that people feel when making decisions outside of the domain of morality. This raises

the question of whether the process of developing moral clarity differs from the process of

developing non-moral forms of clarity or certainty, such as overconfidence in forecasting. It also

raises the question of whether the downstream consequences of moral clarity differ from the

consequences generated by other forms of clarity.

Antecedents

Little research has examined the antecedents of moral clarity. Wiltermuth and Flynn

(2012), however, found that people who possess power also develop a heightened sense of moral

clarity and consequently punish others more severely for perceived transgressions than do people

who lack power. Moreover, Lammers and Stapel (2009) found that power increases people’s

reliance on deontological or formalist forms of moral reasoning over teleological or utilitarian

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approaches. To the extent that relying on one principle of action increases moral clarity relative

to relying on a calculation of situationally dependent costs and benefits, power may increase

moral clarity by changing people’s approaches to ethical decision-making.

The effects of power on non-moral attitudes parallel the effects of power on moral clarity.

Power similarly makes people overconfident of their knowledge of factual matters (Fast,

Sivanathan, Mayer, & Galinsky, 2012) and leads people to engage in confirmatory information-

processing (Fischer, Fischer, Englisch, Aydin, & Frey, 2011), which could cause them to be

more certain in all their attitudes, moral and non-moral alike. Factors that strengthen people’s

attitude certainty, such as perceived consensus, the number of times they have voiced that

attitude, and the ease with which they can defend the attitude (for review see Tormala & Rucker,

2007) are also likely to affect the clarity with which people make moral judgments.

Given that the same factors seem to contribute to clarity in moral and non-moral beliefs,

one might legitimately ask whether it is possible to be highly certain in moral domains and less

certain in other domains. The proposition is entirely untested, but we can imagine people who

are not especially confident in their own bases of knowledge, or in their tastes, possessing a

strong sense of right and wrong if they see that sense of right and wrong as something that was

handed down to them by God or by their parents. Such people would have a high level of moral

clarity but relatively little clarity in other judgments.

Consequences

Moral clarity may produce different consequences than does certainty or clarity on non-

moral issues. Evidence for this comes from a study by Skitka, Bauman, and Sargis (2005) on

moral convictions and the attitudes (i.e., moral mandates) that stem from those convictions.

Skitka and colleagues found that convictions on moral issues, on which people would possess

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high levels of moral clarity, led people to feel greater antipathy toward individuals who held

dissimilar views on those issues than did similar differences in attitudes that were not based on

moral issues. To the extent that disagreements based on moral convictions are more deleterious

toward cooperativeness and tolerance of others than are disagreements based on non-moral

attitudes, it becomes especially important to understand why people come to develop such strong

moral attitudes and see moral issues with such (justified or unjustified) clarity.

Innate, Learned, or Both?

A growing body of research suggests that people have an innate sense of right and wrong.

Some of the strongest evidence for this claim comes, perhaps oddly, from non-humans. Capuchin

monkeys will reject rewards for tasks when their rewards seem inequitable in comparison with

the rewards received by other capuchins (Brosnan & de Waal, 2003). Thus species sharing a

common ancestry with humans further share a sense of fairness. Human babies as young as 15

months can also detect unfairness when it occurs, as evidenced by the longer gaze they give to

experimenters when those experimenters administer unequal portions of food to people

compared to when those experimenters administer equal portions (Schmidt & Sommerville,

2011). Infants as young as six months show preferences for pro-social individuals over anti-

social individuals (Hamlin, Wynn, & Boom, 2007). Moreover, cross-cultural research has

demonstrated that some moral precepts, such as do not harm others, are common across cultures.

The strong evidence that people possess innate moral compasses suggests that some level

of moral clarity is probably innate. However, it does not necessarily suggest that moral clarity is

entirely innate. A large literature has shown that parents heavily influence the values held by

their children (e.g., Lapsley & Power, 2005). By placing high importance on some values and

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less importance on others, parents likely also influence the degree of ambiguity children see in

various situations regarding those values. They may do so through their direct conversations with

their children and through their choices about the environments (e.g., schools, religious

institutions) in which their children spend their time. Peers no doubt have effects as well on

which values individuals come to hold with a great sense of clarity. Moral clarity on specific

issues may therefore have a learned component.

It is similarly possible that parents, teachers, and others could influence moral clarity in

individuals across a range of domains and issues by instilling a questioning attitude, such that

they train children to question the stances that people take on issues and see the nuances in

ethically charged situations. By the same token, parents may encourage moral clarity by

encouraging steadfast adherence to some principles.

Once an individual develops a sense of clarity about an issue, that person may become

highly unlikely to change their opinion about the issue because, consistent with the confirmation

bias (for review see Nickerson, 1998), they may selectively attend to information that supports

their view. Additionally, they may be motivated to construe any information about an issue as

supportive of their initial position. If these processes occur, moral clarity may be self-reinforcing.

Such processes are particularly likely to occur if people feel like their self-views or core

beliefs are threatened (Munro & Ditto, 2007; Munro & Stansbury, 2009). In such instances,

people dig in their heels and seek to discredit any information that undermines the views they

hold dear (Greenwald, 1980). As such, moral clarity may be particularly self-reinforcing when

people’s values collide and those who already perceive little ambiguity in the moral matters at

hand feel that their views are under threat.

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Cultural Influences

The culture surrounding an individual may influence how much of a sense of moral

clarity that individual possesses. One way that culture may influence how much ambiguity

people perceive is through norms about which behaviors are morally appropriate, which

behaviors are morally tolerable, and which behaviors are grounds for moral censure. For

example, in some cultures there may be a strong norm against nepotism, whereas in other

cultures the practice may be seen as a natural and acceptable extension of loyalty to one’s in-

group. In cultures in which there is strong social consensus that a behavior is either immoral or

moral, people may possess a high sense of moral clarity on the issue (Jones, 1991). When the

prevailing societal view is less clear, people may possess less clarity.

Culture may also influence behavior more systematically. Hofstede (1979; 1983)

established four dimensions on which cultures can vary: individualism/collectivism, power

distance, masculinity/femininity, and uncertainty avoidance. Uncertainty avoidance is the

dimension most relevant to moral clarity and is defined as “the extent to which individuals

within a culture are made nervous by situations that are unstructured, unclear, or unpredictable,

and the extent to which these individuals attempt to avoid such situations by adopting strict

codes of behavior and a belief in absolute truth” (Vitell, Nwachukwu, & Barnes, 1993, p. 754).

People may possess heightened levels of moral clarity in countries like Germany and Japan,

which are characterized by high levels of uncertainty avoidance, relative to people in Singapore

and the United Kingdom, which are characterized by low levels of uncertainty avoidance.

The philosophies or religions foundational to a culture may also influence the strength of

moral clarity an individual from that culture will possess. In Chinese culture the religions of

Taoism and (to a lesser extent) Confucianism feature the yin and the yang, suggesting that two

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opposite forces (such as light and dark) are present and necessary for each to exist. These two

opposite forces are seen as working not against each other but rather with each other to achieve a

perfect balance (e.g., Garrett, 1993). In the graphical representation of yin and yang, there is a

drop of yin in the yang and a drop of yang in the yin. Viewed through this lens, actions may be

seen as not purely moral or purely immoral but rather some mix of these. We might therefore

expect people to exhibit lower levels of moral clarity in cultures in which Taoist and related

philosophies are followed. Indeed, scholars have suggested that following such philosophies

encourages people to adopt multiple perspectives when analyzing behavior (Johnson, 2000).

Adopting multiple perspectives when analyzing behavior may correlate with people

taking a relativistic rather than an absolutistic approach to ethics. People who take a relativistic

view would argue that society defines what is moral and immoral and, as societies differ, so too

might the meanings of moral and immoral, right and wrong differ across cultures (Forsyth &

Berger, 1982). One could legitimately ask whether it is possible to have a strong sense of moral

clarity when using relativistic forms of moral judgment. We would posit that one could have a

sense of moral clarity using relativistic judgments but that the moral clarity of such judgments

would likely stem from one’s confidence in the prevailing views of society. Moral clarity using

absolute (i.e., invariant) standards of moral judgment is easier to understand, as it would

correspond to how sure an individual is that a behavior violates an absolute principle.

Future research could and should determine whether moral clarity differs depending upon

the level of uncertainty avoidance in a culture and the degree to which people in that culture

espouse dualistic philosophies. We hope that it also further examines what moral clarity looks

like when people strongly adhere to using relativistic or culturally specific standards of behavior.

Some people worry that certainty of any kind has become the casualty of a postmodern age in

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which all beliefs and judgments are considered socially constructed and situationally dependent,

but it is equally possible that such firmly relativistic contentions evince their own form of moral

clarity.

Conclusion

Throughout our lives we expect and are expected to know right from wrong. Ordinary

citizens, prominent figures, and even entire governments are routinely criticized for showing an

absence of moral clarity. On the other hand, some people may find overconfidence about moral

issues to be narrow-minded or oppressive. Hence moral clarity occupies a unique position in our

social environment compared to certainty about factual knowledge or personal preferences.

Moral clarity acts as both a motive for individual conduct and a signal in interpersonal relations.

Paradoxically, clarity enables us to direct our will yet simultaneously constrains our decisions.

Without any clarity whatsoever we would be helpless to choose between all available options,

but extreme clarity can restrict the many possibilities for action to a single unequivocal path.

Moral clarity may be seen in this light as a valve controlling the flow of judgment and behavior.

Investigating the forces that turn this mechanism, and the downstream consequences that follow,

will open a new channel to understanding the dynamics of morality.

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